Cuban Rafters

I WANT to express my indignation about the way those six Cuban rafters were treated when their only crime was seeking freedom like I had to do 38 years ago.My family and I were treated as humans and not criminals, which gave us an opportunity to become productive American citizens, paying more than a million dollars in taxes since we came here.The majority of the American people have no idea what it is not to have freedom, and, if any of them were in the same situation as the people in Cuba are today, the Americans would do exactly the same.

The Associated Press MIAMI (AP) — A Royal Caribbean cruise ship rescued seven people on a raft in the middle of the ocean on its way back toPort Everglades. The cruise line reports that passengers on the Oasis of the Seas spotted the small blue raft Friday afternoon, and the captain turned around the 220,000-ton ship to rescue the rafters. Royal Caribbean notified the U.S. Coast Guard, and the six men and one woman were transferred to their custody. The cruise line described the rafters as Cubans, but the Coast Guard said the nationality of the group could not be immediately confirmed.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Two Cuban rafters trying to reach the United States washed up way off course on a Colombian-controlled vacation isle in the Caribbean, authorities said Sunday. A Colombian Navy vessel found the would-be immigrants, together with a Colombian and a Costa Rican, marooned in a homemade boat just off the palm-fringed shores of tropical San Andres. They had set sail from Costa Rica. State security police said, ``The Cubans opted to build a homemade boat and set off for the United States but due to poor compass readings and other inaccuracies they arrived in San Andres,'' which lies east of Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

MIAMI -- Nine Cuban migrants found at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard were returned to their homeland, officials said Friday. Four men were discovered floating on a rubber raft 10 miles east of Homestead on Thursday, the Coast Guard said. They were picked up by a Coast Guard cutter and interviewed by federal agents, who determined that they should be taken to Bahia de Cabanas, Cuba. Another eight men were found in a boat in the Florida Keys on Wednesday. Three men made it to shore and were taken into custody by the Border Patrol.

The last Cuban refugees flew out of Panama on Saturday, headed for a U.S. Navy base on the island they had risked their lives to flee aboard rafts and rickety boats.About 160 Cuban rafters were on Saturday's flight, the last of 7,500 who had been sheltered at U.S. military camps in Panama for five months after being plucked from the sea during their flight from Cuba last summer.Panama agreed to take in Cubans temporarily after President Clinton, confronting a sudden wave of boat people fleeing Cuba, ended a policy of granting refugee status to almost all Cubans intercepted at sea.Thousands of Cuban refugees have been at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, in eastern Cuba, and in Panama ever since.

The mass Cuban migration on Sunday raced toward what might be a furious finish as rafters paddled into the Florida Strait trying to beat the clock, the weather and the police.The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 929 rafters on Sunday, the largest batch of rafters to leave the island in several days.Anyone trying to sail away starting Tuesday will be stopped, by force if necessary, the Cuban government said after the U.S. government agreed to grant a minimum of 20,000 visas to Cuba.The weather they were trying to avoid was the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Debby, which left nine people dead and hundreds homeless in the Caribbean, whipped up waves and winds Monday on the main route for Cuban rafters to the United States. The storm tore up banana plantations on the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and St. Lucia, then skirted the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, weakening as it turned toward Cuba. By afternoon, the remnants of the storm, downgraded Sunday to a tropical wave, covered an area from the south of Cuba to South Florida.

Seventy-nine Cuban rafters were picked up over the weekend and were being transported to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Coast Guard said Sunday. There were 34 aboard a 15-foot wooden raft spotted Saturday in international waters just north of the shallow waters of Cay Sal Bank, said Petty Officer David French of the Miami Coast Guard office. The rest were spotted on Cay Sal island Sunday. ''A few of them had some sun exposure. But for the most part, they were all in good condition,'' French said.

It's hard to believe that nearly three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Russia and Eastern Europe in transition to democracy, people are dying on our doorstep as they attempt to flee one of the last strongholds of communist tyranny left in the world.Cubans are escaping the island in record numbers on anything that floats. The most common devices are rafts made of inner tubes, plywood or Styrofoam. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that three out of four attempts by Cuban rafters to cross the Florida Straits end in tragedy.

A heartfelt but faint echo of Miami's impassioned Cuban protests finally was heard in Orlando on Thursday night.About 60 Central Floridians gathered at an east Orlando church to pray for a change in the new Cuban refugee policy. The policy denies Cuban rafters who flee the island legal entry into the United States, returning them to authorities of the Communist government.''We need a solution, but we know the solution we have today is not the right one,'' said Hiram Bustamante, 30, a financial planner who organized the vigil at Faith Spanish Assembly of God church.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Two Cuban rafters trying to reach the United States washed up way off course on a Colombian-controlled vacation isle in the Caribbean, authorities said Sunday. A Colombian Navy vessel found the would-be immigrants, together with a Colombian and a Costa Rican, marooned in a homemade boat just off the palm-fringed shores of tropical San Andres. They had set sail from Costa Rica. State security police said, ``The Cubans opted to build a homemade boat and set off for the United States but due to poor compass readings and other inaccuracies they arrived in San Andres,'' which lies east of Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

JULY 13 is the fifth anniversary of the sinking of the tugboat ``13 de Marzo'' by Fidel Castro's repressive forces. Only seven miles from the Havana harbor, 23 children and 18 adults paid with their lives for their attempted escape from that communist ``paradise.''Government patrol boats savagely and repeatedly rammed the tiny, old tugboat with its human cargo, then turned their powerful water cannons on the desperate swimmers until all were dead and floating among the small pieces of debris.

Their tired bodies struggled to keep afloat as rushing water from powerful fire hoses roared their way. Their eyes, fixed on the shoreline as they frantically tried to swim to U.S. soil, felt the sting of pepper spray.As television helicopters hovered above, a U.S. Coast Guard ship about 400 yards from land used the fire hoses and pepper spray to try to keep six Cubans from reaching the shore of Surfside, a beach town north of Miami Beach. My Cuban-American heart sank. Those men weren't hurting anyone.

I WANT to express my indignation about the way those six Cuban rafters were treated when their only crime was seeking freedom like I had to do 38 years ago.My family and I were treated as humans and not criminals, which gave us an opportunity to become productive American citizens, paying more than a million dollars in taxes since we came here.The majority of the American people have no idea what it is not to have freedom, and, if any of them were in the same situation as the people in Cuba are today, the Americans would do exactly the same.

HAVANA - The U.S. Coast Guard has repatriated another 22 Cuban escapees caught in boats at sea while trying to flee their communist-run homeland, Havana said Thursday. The handover of 19 men and three women at the western Cuban port of Mariel brought to 1,770 the number repatriated since Washington and Havana signed a 1995 immigration accord intended to stem an uncontrolled flood of ``rafters'' leaving the island. ``After receiving a medical check, these people were transported by the Cuban state to their homes,'' said an official report on state media.

TALLAHASSEE - Florida taxpayers no longer will bear the financial burden when large groups of people leave their homelands and come ashore on the state's beaches.Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a landmark agreement Monday that calls for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to coordinate and pay for the response when refugees dodge interdiction at sea and make it to shore.Four years in the making, the agreement is the first of its kind between a state and the federal government.It also marks the latest improvement in relations between Tallahassee and Washington, which were badly strained during a 1994 crisis that saw 32,000 Cubans seek haven in the United States.

The Associated Press MIAMI (AP) — A Royal Caribbean cruise ship rescued seven people on a raft in the middle of the ocean on its way back toPort Everglades. The cruise line reports that passengers on the Oasis of the Seas spotted the small blue raft Friday afternoon, and the captain turned around the 220,000-ton ship to rescue the rafters. Royal Caribbean notified the U.S. Coast Guard, and the six men and one woman were transferred to their custody. The cruise line described the rafters as Cubans, but the Coast Guard said the nationality of the group could not be immediately confirmed.

The Clinton administration has decided to allow family visits to the 25,000 Cuban refugees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The Miami Herald reported Sunday. U.S. officials also are considering whether to grant U.S. entry to those refugees who put to sea before President Clinton's Aug. 19 decision to bar entry to Cuban rafters, the newspaper said. That would mean as many as 7,000 of the Cuban refugees could be permitted to come to the United States. Increasing numbers of the Cuban refugees have become despondent.

The Coast Guard has repatriated three Cubans who were picked up in the Florida Strait fleeing the Communist-ruled island on a raft. A fourth was taken to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in southeastern Cuba, where his appeal for political asylum will be assessed, a Coast Guard spokesman said. The four were rescued by a Coast Guard cutter on Friday nine miles east of Alligator Reef in the Florida Keys.